How creepy is the creepiest person you ever met at work?
I think about work too much. It consumes way too much of my conscious thought. It’s not consumed by work I have to do or by ideas for projects or planning out my ‘work time’ during my ‘me time’. It’s consumed more by a variation of this thought: For all that is fucking holy, I have to go back there. For fuck’s sake, was I Eva Braun in my last life?
Oh, and I will apologize in advance if I’ve offended any Eva Braun supporters or historians who can tell me in great detail about how Eva Braun was just as much a victim. I don’t know. I don’t know that much about Eva Braun.
In either case, its my brain and it will think what it wants.
But I digress.
I have two people that I can talk about here. They were both from previous jobs, but holy fuck, were they creepy. The names have been changed to protect the shudder inducing creeps.
The first one, Ralph, was a scrawny little blond dude with bushy hair like John Travolta on Welcome Back Kotter. This is the guy that you know wore platform shoes back in the seventies when he was in high school.
I was a consultant in the IT department of a huge ‘rent to own’ company. I hated going there because the whole rent to own thing is creepy on its own. Although, if I am honest, I hated going there just as much because of Ralph. When I started there, I was in a long line of cubicles that were just outside of a long line of offices. There was a ‘desk hierarchy’ at this company. You started in the cubicle then moved into an office, which were split into two offices, one closest to the hallway and the back one, which had a view of the golf course outside the building.
A new programmer was hired full time and was assigned to the cubicle I was using. I was a consultant, so I did not have to conform to the hierarchy. The department director moved me into the window office behind me. The other person in that office was Ralph.
Ralph was not pleased. He was not pleased on many levels. He did not express this displeasure when his boss told him of the change. He didn’t say anything when I took my purse and briefcase into my new space. He waited until I went back out out to the cubicle and then he shut and locked the door to the office.
When I tried to get in, he yelled through the door. “I am not letting you in. You shouldn’t get a window and I am not sharing an office with a woman”.
I asked him if I could at least get my purse out. He opened the door a fraction of an inch like a scared little old lady. “You get your stuff and get out. I will be watching”.
I got my stuff and continued working in the cubicle until the director came by and asked what I was still do there. I told him I was fine right where I was. He got a little annoyed and explained again about the desk hierarchy. So I had no choice then but to say “Well, then we have a little problem”.
Ralph was furious with me for ratting him out.
He realized the battle was lost and consoled himself with openly glaring at me whenever I walked in the room for about a week. Then he loosened up and got creepier.
Every morning when I would walk in he would pick up a picture of his wife and two daughters and bring over for me to see. Every morning. The morning show and tell also included these words: “Look at them. They are the most beautiful girls in the whole world. Tell me they are the most beautiful girls you’ve ever seen”. Then he would sit down at his desk and coo at his picture. “Look at them…they’re angels”.
I don’t remember anything else with Ralph, other than he used to intently stare at women when they were at their desks. Apparently, there were complaints.
I knew Ralph when we lived in Wichita, KS. I wasn’t sorry when we moved a number of states away from Ralph.
The other creep was Ken. Ken was a boss I had at my last job. Ken might be the foulest human being I have ever know. I’d need more than a blog post to express the creepiness that was Ken, so instead, I will just hit the highlights of his creepiness as a person. His creepiness as a boss could fill a book on how to be a terrible boss.
- He smelled like boiled cabbage
- When he talked to you, he would stand within six inches of you.
- He laughed like a hyena on helium
- He had a skin condition that caused him to have sores on his arms. He constantly picked at and licked these sores.
- Yes, I said licked.
- When he wasn’t picking at sores, he was rearranging his balls.
He eventually got fired for none of those things and I was given his job.
I made one demand when I took over his office. I needed a new chair. No way I was using Cabbage McStinkySore’s chair.
So how about about, who has been your creepiest coworker? Or if that doesn’t apply, you can always just tell me about a run of the mill creep.
They sound like utter delights. Well…where do I start? There are so many to choose from!
I think possibly the one that wins the total creep award is Jim, the head salesman of a none too legitimate double glazing company. When I was about 19 and first moved down to London I was working two jobs as well as gigging . One of the jobs was for a rather questionable firm in North London, owned at the time by two real wideboys, one of whom was a wannabe actor and the other, a wannabe big band singer, (and now the famous father of a very sad dead pop star), but we won’t go into his failings as a human on here as this is about Jim!
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My job was to take calls from people who had fallen for the old ‘show home’ leaflet ruse and make an appointment for a salesman who would then go round and bully the poor halfwits into paying way too much for some inferior quality double glazing, usually on credit at some ridiculous interest rate. I hated the job but it was good money and I got to use the photocopier for my band’s fliers after everyone had gone home. They all left at 5pm but I worked till 8pm most days, only very occasionally did any of the salesmen come to the office after 5 and the door was locked. Jim was in his 30s, married with kids, pot bellied, unpleasant and a real slime ball. From the outset he made lewd comments and jokes that he thought were funny and were just sexist, crude or just dreadful. One afternoon he stood in front of my desk with a shoe box positioned in front of his groin and told me there was a little dormouse in the box…
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I, although only 19, had been playing professional gigs with much older male musicians for about 6 years already, so wasn’t naive enough to fall for that one. I leaned over the desk and deftly slammed the shoe box upward from underneath. Judging from the hopping up and down and cries of pain and woe emanating from Jim I assumed that my assessment of what was actually in the box was accurate.
🙂
The one night he came back to the office after 5pm and decided he would grab, kiss and grope me. Apparently he thought that as one of the directors was having an affair with the marketing manageress that he should be able to do the same with me.
I threw him out of the building and locked him out. I made a complaint to the management but apart from telling him not to do it again that was the end of it. He stayed out of my way after that but would give me leery nasty sideways glances if he was in the building. I found another job and left.
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Unfortunately this is but one of the many creeps I’ve experienced in my lifetime, in school, at work and in general.
Holy hell…THAT is horrible. I’m glad you got him to back off. What a dick.
-.- I didn’t know there were men who actually tried to pull the dick-in-a-box thing. I just thought it was a fun SNL skit. My naivete has been shattered.
Oh yes, any ridiculous prank that you may think is just an urban legend, or from a skit, some creepo has tried on me at one time or another.
I love men, but not all of them, some are just dicks
I can only remember one creepy person worth mentioning from all the jobs I’ve ever had…mainly because I’ve been a bouncer/security guard a bunch of times and a large part of those jobs involved creep identification, intervention and removal. Come to think of it, most times I was a cook (especially when I worked 3rd shift) that was about 40% of the job description. Outside of that, I have had one truly creepy coworker. I feel that it bears mentioning that I’m pretty numb to superficial levels of creepy at this point not only from the aforementioned years of creep management but also due to the weird friends I have and the education/profession I’ve chosen in the mental health field. Being weird or diagnosable shouldn’t really come with a stigma or judgment (though sadly, they do) whereas creepy…truly creepy…fuck. that. noise. My one truly creepy former coworker was a woman named “holy shit, kill it…kill it with fire and bury the ashes” or, holly for short. She seemed normal for about the first 30 seconds and then went from weird to exceptionally creepy in a matter of minutes and stayed there right up until she landed on dangerous enough to dial 9-1 and fire her ass. At first, she just couldn’t pronounce the word “appointment”, then she began describing her job duties with an air of self-importance (still just weird mind you), next I noticed that her sense of personal space was clearly on a sliding scale which was based on absolutely nothing any sane, non-serial killer could perceive; one day she was visibly angry that she had been handed a cup of coffee that she had asked someone to hand her and the next she followed me into a changing room to ask me a question about filling a form out properly. She regularly forgot who her immediate supervisor was (hint…it was me) and not in the “oh no, do we need to call your doctor?” way, more in the “I don’t like you so I’ll pretend you don’t exist way. I was honestly a little worried whenever she was in the same room as me and a pair of scissors especially because she didn’t make noise when she walked and each time I noticed her it seemed as though she had been standing there for a few minutes…then there was the whispering. It was her main mode of communication; she seemed to think that it was an appropriate volume and would scowl if anyone asked her to repeat anything. Which is actually what led to the meltdown which led to her firing. A customer asked her to speak up one day and we all gathered to see what would happen. First she just repeated herself, then she stomped away, then I walked over to the customer to try to keep him from leaving angrily…she lost her shit. Right after the initial fear that we all felt that she might kill someone, came a series of stifled laughter at the litany of racial epithets (against races/ethnicities not represented at all…in the entire company) threats of entirely non-threatening behavior…which of course started at a whisper and ended with a screaming match between her and…no one. She ended on “WELL THEN…”. Loudly, oddly not remotely aggressively. At this point I’m rambling and details are escaping me a bit but seriously…goddamn dude.
How completely bizarre…how do these people continue to function??
I can’t believe you didn’t marry Ken. He sounds like a keeper. And I can’t figure out Ralph and the family photos. Do you suppose he thought all women were after him and wanted to make sure you knew that he already had a great family? Or was afraid that he would want to stray (and of course all women wanted him) and he was simply reminding himself that he already had a great family? Ah, who knows?
Hahhah…marry him? For all that is holy…
My first year of university, I was cast in the chorus of a show that was a directing project for someone doing their master’s degree. While there were several other people my age in the chorus, most of the main roles were filled by people in their mid-thirties. One of these people, a tall, balding guy twice my age, took a liking to me that seemed innocuous enough at first, but it wasn’t long before he started sneaking innuendos into almost every conversation we had.
The day I had enough was when he cornered me in a stairwell as I was waiting for a cue to go out on the catwalk. He stood very close to me and started talking about my name and how its first letter was K, and how he wished my last name started with a Y because he found the idea of me and K-Y very pleasurable.
Ew. No. No no no no no. Not okay. After that I made arrangements with my castmates so that he and I would never be alone together backstage ever again.
What on EARTH would make a motherfucker think that was a good idea to say that?? Do comments like that work with some women??
We had this conversation on Twitter a few days ago, and I told you all about Phil:
http://psb1969.blogspot.com/2013/10/phil.html
But some stuff I left out? He had a thing for blondes (I am not blonde, and this was an instance I was very, very happy not to be). If you were a blonde female between the ages of 17 (we had a summer intern once) and 72, Phil would come to your office door and lean on the door frame and… Stand there. That was all. He wouldn’t speak first, and if you said, “Hey, Phil…anything I can do for you?” he’d just respond, “No.” and continue to stand in the doorway. For just however long he felt like looking and then he’d leave. I was Phil’s manager and had quite a few conversations with him about how uncomfortable he was making women by doing this. So he’d cut it out with whatever current blonde he’d been giving the creeping willies to and move on to the next.
Oh…and he like women’s toes. He smoked, as did a few ladies in the office building. In the summer, he always made weird, inappropriate comments about their toes if they were wearing sandals while standing out at the smoke pit. Once (I am not making this up) “I really like the color of your toenails. It’s the same color as my wife’s favorite pair of underpants.” And “You really do your toes nice. You know, some people like to suck on toes.”
Another closed door session with Phil.
Oh! And office luncheons! He would never bring anything…never socialize during the luncheon…but he’d bring in his own platter…and this thing was a PLATTER, not a plate…instead of using the provided Styrofoam plates and would LOAD. UP. until he could barely balance it. He’d sit down a little apart from everyone else, tuck a paper towel into his shirt (I shit you not) and shovel food in like there was no tomorrow. We did a chili cook-off a few times a year. Phil had determined that he LOVED one person’s white chicken chili. So he got in line as quick as he could when the dinner bell was rung with a MIXING BOWL and practically emptied the crockpot before anyone else was able to even try it.
I ended up having to tell him that if he wasn’t going to contribute, he couldn’t participate. That at the very least, he could give money to the receptionist who always went and bought plates, bowls and utensils for these events. From there on…he’d give her a $5 each time. And proceed on to eat $20 worth of food. He was a mess.
Of course (and you gotta go read the post about him) he ended his time with us by (maybe) threatening to decapitate me.
That is amazing. WOW..and I did read that post after we talked about it. People are so fucking weird.
Slither. That’s what my friends Briana and Jack called the head carver at the jewelry manufacturing business they worked at in the mid ’80s. He was such a lech that he was always trying to teach women how to carve, so he’d get to stand behind them at the grinder and hold on to their arms. Briana and Jack didn’t always get along, but one day Jack said to her “I think we should band together as human beings against Slither”, to which she replied “I think we should band together as vertebrates…” She ended up taking Slither’s job, but for less money because she’s female.
So, you’re saying this creepy co-worker actually WAS a writhing snake?
His actual last name was close enough to slither, that given his behavior, it was a natural fit. The boss fired him on Christmas eve in his hospital room where he was recovering from being poisoned by his landlord. I felt for him a little when that happened, but even snakes are vertebrates.
Damn…poisoned by his landlord sounds like an interesting story.
It’s always best to band against the Slither.
WOW – glad I didn’t have to work with either Ralph or Ken or any of the other creeps mentioned above.
My first job was in a bank and the assistant administration manager was the creepiest guy I have ever worked with. He had short man’s syndrome and the greasiest hair going which he was always combing. And he played with his nuts the whole day. It used to drive us batty when he would come and stand at the desk and fiddle away the whole time he was talking to you. I was very pleased to move from that branch to another branch and get away from him.
Have a wonderful day !
Me xox
Yeah…WHY do they do that? Do they think they’re gonna run away or something?
Creepy? How ’bout the archives & fleet manager who got my name wrong for the entire 3 years that I worked there and said I could be on his Zales Christmas list, like his wife, if I just played my cards right & “went out” with him (& let him show me his many talents). I declined so he of course proceeded to talk shit about me behind my back. I took the opportunity to make him feel stupid in front of everyone during my farewell luncheon by correcting his mistake with my name. Everyone thought “Lorelei” was his nickname for me.
What. A. Creep.
I’d give him a gently undulating ball of snakes. (I love that!)
that can be our girl band name!
Hahaha! Awesome!
Well there was the guy who got fired for screaming at people and we had to change our locks.
There’s nothing inherently creepy about my coworkers. Just annoying. I’m a fearless individual. Maybe that makes me the creepy coworker! Uh oh!
My coworkers all have annoying quirks. Germophobes, loud mouths, loud eaters, tea partiers, drama queens, drunks, pranksters, assholes, spies, adorkables, apathetics, chain smokers, judges, perverts, weirdos, idiots, you name it.
I have one in my office who smells like soup, tells dad jokes, and is hard-headed but he’s fine. I hated working for him and he gets on my nerves, but he’s not creepy.
I have a woman in my office who stomps around in boots and never looks before leaving her office which opens into a narrow hall, causing anybody who might be there to get bumped into when she barges on past. She won’t let me put work into her inbox–just prefers her mail cubby. I used to keep a special box just for her, actually. I’ve gotten into several screaming matches with her at work because she’s the type of person who will be like, “Let me ask you a question: Where is X file?” and then, “Why don’t you know where x file is?” and then several follow up questions, rapid fire. Ugh. ugh, go away ugh. There’s just something off about her but not quite creepy.
Then there’s the department head’s secretary who walks by and does a double take outside everyone’s cubicle like a spy. She’s nice enough but I think that’s rude.
We have a secretary like that in our office. She’s an upper management secretary, but she makes it a point to walk through our department…making no excuses for the fact that she is just ‘seeing who came to work’. She’s not popular.
Definitely my first job. I was 17. I worked in the mail room. When I went into the little cubby to sort the mail, he would come and stand in the doorway so I couldn’t get out. I would have to flash the little light so one of my co-workers would know I was stuck in the cubby with Mr. creeper…..and she would come and rescue me. Shocking the shit I put up with as a young woman.
Yeah, you shouldn’t NEED a system like that..
Oh! Oh! I just remembered one!
We used to have a deli on “work campus” and these two heavyset weirdos worked there. Big fat guys who would comment on my appearance and asked me where I lived and if I could take him home with me. And he was serious. At the time I was at least half their age. What made them creepy is that they always told these dumb sexual jokes and it totally made me feel weird.
One day they got fired … I think because one threatened the other with a knife. One of them “follows” me on Facebook. Not friended. Follows.
Oh god…that IS creepy.
I was a waitress when I was a teenager. Small town. I had some real issues with some of the regulars. I was 17 years old, for fuck’s sake.
I was a temp/contractor/consultant for many years. I worked with plenty of creepy people throughout the years. I don’t remember any of their names as a matter of therapy.
First there was “homeless Bob” who was a scummy looking fellow that I work with at an office supply company. He started off picking orders and I was stacking palettes, but we soon switched jobs. This was at the request of the other two guys on the line who were disturbed by him. His car, a small Chevy, was piled up with what appeared to be his every earthly possession.
The second was a girl who seemed to have her eye on me (and any other guy that had a pulse). She seemed to only work as a temp to find herself a man. She was a chain-smoking, hard cursing, train-track veined kind of woman. She smelled like…I can’t describe it, but she was definitely one of the unwashed masses. I must have caught her eye because she came up to me with her beer and cigarette breath and started talking to me…about some things that are not normally discussed in even a semi-professional environment. I kind of blew her off by ignoring her and she didn’t like me anymore. According to rumor, she wanted to get hired into the company so she made her supervisor an offer that he was smart to refuse.
Oh wow…yeah…I guess no matter who you are…if you are in the work force long enough, you’re gonna meet some weirdos.
OMG. That was the best creepy coworker story EVER.
Sadly I don’t have any creepy coworker stories, just out and out sexual harassment stories. Though there was one guy at an old job who the men told me would go into the men’s room and pee *without* holding his dick. What did he do with his arms you might ask? Well, he would cross them and place them (AND HIS HEAD) down on the top of the urinal while he pissed.
Not so much creepy but really gross.
Yeah, I have my share of harassment stories as well…assholes.
Gah. Nothing as bad as these as coworkers, but I did kind of have one at my first “real” job at age 19. He started out pretty nice, kind of nerdy, married, 30ish. He used to loiter/not work around the cash register where I worked, talking about how his wife was such a hag, etc., then he started asking me out, then started joking about coming over to my house when my fiance wasn’t there. I was naive and probably too nice, so I didn’t yet have the heart to just tell him to go away, more of just the nervous laughter and “ummm, yeah…I have a boyfriend.” He *seemed* nice, but he still gave me the creeps. One night, he said he was going to bring pizza and just show up at my apartment after work, under the guise of “my wife left me and I need a friend”. I have no idea how he found out where I lived, but I outwitted him by driving home too slow and taking an alternate route, then parking down the street from my corner apartment. I actually SAW him drive past my building (WTH dude?) before he gave up and went home. I managed to switch to an upstairs/accounting job, so I didn’t have to work with him any more, but what…the..heck. Who drives over to your HOUSE?
The only serious creeper I dealt with other than that…actually LIVED at our house when I was about 12, but that’s a different story, and it wasn’t funny.
Yeah, 12 and creeper wouldn’t be funny. Although, the other one is pretty horrible.
Oh this is too funny. Mostly because I did not experience THIS particular level of Creepage. I have worked with Mama’s Boys, overgrown teenagers who were in their late 20’s but still partied too much to actually come to work or gods forbid CALL or email to let us know, and one particular LARPer, (Live Action Role Play,) which he loved to do. Like Dungeons and Dragons, but REAL LIFE with costumes and lots of adults. He wore capes and costume hats to work and had action figures all over his desk, which I’m not judging THAT because I have a Ralphie from the Simpsons that I adore, but he also would play ancient musical instruments that I don’t know the names of, but they are the ones you see at Renaissance Fairs, and THIS is why he needed to constantly practice them. At work ?
HAHAHAH! That is awesome!
There is a guy at work who plays his ukulele all the time. It’s horrible. The only good thing that has come of it is I can now spell ukulele without having to look up the spelling.
LICKED??? Oh my god, I don’t even know how to convey the depth of my disgust.
I actually gagged one morning…not even kidding. It was the first thing I saw when I walked through the door.
this post and all these comments make me very very glad that i have never really been around people who felt the need to creep on me.
i mean, working front desk at the library was a good place to meet creepy-ass dudes, but they tended to back off when you said “sorry, i’m married.”
You and Aussa win the creepy coworker contest. I’ve got nothin’ on that! Not yet, anyway.
I hope that you never have to experience a moment of creepiness.
I worry that I might be the creepy one at work 🙂
HAHAHAHA…I doubt it. I could accept quirky, odd, endearing, weird or eccentric…but not creepy
*pauses to vomit at the thought of licking sores*
I can’t top either of those co-workers. The worst I’ve got is a guy who would clip his fingernails at the desk next to mine. That doesn’t even come close to licking…
*vomits again*
clipping fingernails is REALLY gross though…why do so many people think that is acceptable?
Well, let’s see…I currently work with a girl who smells so badly that you can practically see the stench waves and who just loves to tell me all about her sexcapades with her beyond-creepy-looking husband and whatever girl they can coerce into a threesome. I also have a customer who has decided he has the hots for me and, after having spoken to me exactly once, announced on Facebook that he was in love with me. He then proceeded to try to talk me into hopping into bed with him–he actually used that God-awful “I’ll show you pleasure like no man has ever showed you before” line. ‘Cause that EVER makes women think, “Well golly gee! I better break me off a piece of that! He must be a real stud.” I once worked with a guy who thought bathing was optional and cursing necessary and found popping his countless zits an irresistible pastime regardless of the fact that he was at work…in public…where people had to see this. But I think one of the worst guys ever was the rather large, smelly man with a glass eye. He sat in the cubicle next to mine and would TAKE OUT HIS EYEBALL and clean it at least 10 times a day. He hit on me constantly and asked me out a dozen times or more. I’d catch him watching me and licking his lips (EWEWEWEWEWEW).
oh for fuck’s sake…those are horrifying. the glass eye? holy crap. The guy who was going to show you pleasure would be kind of funny if he didn’t sound like a deranged stalker. There are some scary scary people out there
I totally just laughed out loud. when I was reading about Ken and saw he licked his sores, I thought to myself, “licked his sores?” and the next line of confirmation made me laugh, like you somehow knew everyone that would read that, would question it.
Hahahaah…it is a hard thought to process